The Apologists

In the next era, as the Church grew, Christians became more noticed and their teachings and way of life criticized. The main pagan view of religion was connected with the gods of the city and with the emperors or rulers who were given divine honors. Refusal by Christians to consider the rulers divine marked them as atheists. Also, because their lasting city was the heavenly Jerusalem, Christians were considered to be disloyal to earthly kingdoms and unwilling to participate in political affairs or the defense of their homeland. Their love for one another and the closeness of their communities led to accusations that they shared their wives. Athenagoras (d. c. 190) addressed his Apology for the Christians to the emperor Marcus Aurelius and refuted philosophically the charges of atheism and appealed for a just dealing with Christians. The unknown Christian author of The Letter to Diognetus likewise attempted to defend Christians against the same charges. He therefore portrayed the followers of Christ in these words: ‘‘They play their full role as citizens but labor under all the

Disabilities of aliens____They share their meals, but not

Their wives.’’ Justin (d. c. 165) is the greatest of the Greek Apologists. In his search for truth, he studied all the current philosophies before arriving at the true philosophy of the Gospel. His Apologies aimed at a Greek philosophical audience and argued that their philosophies needed revelation. Christianity did not need to become Greek, he contended; rather Greek philosophy, in order to become fully true, needed to be absorbed and transformed by Christianity. His Dialogue with Trypho is directed to Jews, showing the positive Christian view of the Old Testament, that worship of Christ is not opposed to monotheism and that the Church is the New Israel. He attempted to show how the Jews and the Greeks each possessed some germ of the Logos (logoi spermatikoi), but that only Christians, joined to the divine Logos (or Word) which is found in Christ in its fullness, have the total and unadulterated truth. Not only did the Apologists attempt to answer the charges against Christianity mentioned above, they also tried to meet the challenge coming from those who twisted the Gospel teachings with their heretical interpretations. St. Irenaeus of Lyon (d. c. 202) left two large works: his Adversus haereses (Against Heresies or The Overthrow of the Pretended but False Gnosis) and his Epideixis (Demonstration of the Apostolic Teaching). Both works were written in Greek by the well-travelled Irenaeus, but Adversus haereses survives only in its Latin translation. In his effort to refute Gnosticism as a secularized imitation of Christianity, which reduced faith to a form of human wisdom, Irenaeus presented the varying teachings of different Gnostic teachers. He followed this catalogue with a contrast between the various forms of Gnosticism and true Christian teaching, using reason, tradition, and the teachings of Christ, the Prophets and the Apostles. Irenaeus’ Epideixis is a much simpler work that presents the essential truths of Christian faith: the triune God, Creation, the Fall, the Incarnation and Redemption. He follows this exposition with a defense of Christian truth and completes the work with an effective appeal to Christian living. Adversus haereses strongly appeals to tradition in contrast to claims on the part of certain Gnostics to new supplemental revelations. Irenaeus searches for a tradition that goes back to the Apostles whom Christ instructed. Apostolic tradition under his influence becomes established as one of the main criteria for determining true Christian teaching and for judging the reliability of the teachings of the Church Fathers in their various works.